June 30 - July 15 2020
Email: mezemirgirma@gmail.com
"Kan nama nyaatu nu keessa jiraa. = The cannibal is among us." Hachalu Hundessa
"Oh, genocide! In Rwanda they were just two ethnic groups. If it comes to Ethiopia? Who knows who kills us? May God save us!" Professor Merera Gudina answering a question I asked him in 2017 on whether he thinks a genocide erupts in our country. I was one of the lecturers who visited him in his party's headquarters in Addis to console him about his expulsion from his teaching position at Addis Ababa University.
An ethnic Amhara mourner who gave an interview to the VoA a week after the current wave of attacks in Oromia Region
said that he suspects that there is a hidden government going operational in this country so as to orchestrate these systematic and selective attacks on his relatives who have been the targets of brutal killings.
This one is an extraordinary observation and awakening unlike some of the Tutsis of Rwanda who believed that the state and everyone in power was doing everything possible to curb genocidal plots.
My esteemed readers,
Instead of this bad news, I wish I announced a certain development program useful for the country. However, today is destined to be the day I sadly scribble what I observed in Addis Ababa.
Tuesday (June 30 - the day after the
assassination of Hachalu Hundesa):
I learned about the death of Afaan Oromo Artiste Hachalu Hundessa from Facebook at 4:00 AM on Tuesday morning. As usual, early in the morning, I walked to my place of work in Biherawi. A few shops and offices opened here and there at that time of the day. I went to the Post Office to mail a dozen copies of my translation of the memoir of a Rwandan woman to Ethiopians in the diaspora. A Post Office worker told me that they don't send to Dubai and Qatar at this time of the COVID 19 pandemic. I carried the books back and placed them at a nearby coffee shop. Customary as it has been during riots in the country, a little after 8:00 AM the internet connection was completely shut down. I couldn't surf the net nor take photos of the fearsome situations. At Biherawi, the financial hub of the nation where almost all bank headquarters are being built, rioters set up roadblocks, and jogged carrying sticks. Broken glass doors and window panes are also seen everywhere. The people who were working, buying and moving in the area were threatened and had to seek refuge in hideouts nearby. I went to the coffee shop and spent the time the raging rioters reigned at. The people hiding speculated that the rioters were heading to Emperor Minelik's statue, located near St. George's Church. This statue, a symbol of the unification of modern Ethiopia, remained a point of contention in the recent Ethiopian political strife. The youth who demonstrated filled the area from the Headquarters of the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation to the Black Lion High School, about a hundred metres long. They were encircled by armed security personnel. As the situation escalated, I went back to a place near my home in Lideta. I sat at the veranda of a cafe, on a second floor of a building opposite Lideta Park. In a motorway about a hundred metres from where I was the youth from the neighborhood were fighting with the rioting youth who were carrying sticks. Hurling stones at the stick-carrying youth, these boys who were not more than twenty in number, were receiving flying sticks in return. Police intercepted and the fighting stopped. While all this was unfolding, people at the cafe, some of whom old enough to be grandparents, were complaining about the time and situation God let them live to see. They reprimanded the boys from Addis to stop throwing rocks. They warned the defenseless people living outside of Addis Ababa would be victims of retaliatory measures the rioters may take when they go back home.
Wednesday (July 1):
On this day, I headed to my work place only to find all businesses closed. There were few cars on the road. One of the very busy traffic-light stops at Lagare had only one car from each of the four directions. Security got tighter. Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were seen here and there. The military also went out of their barracks to calm the nation down. Ethnic-based attacks, the burning down of properties and other forms of violence in parts of Addis Ababa and its outskirts were said to take place. Towns within the Oromia Regional State were also said to have entertained similar incidents. Top government officials gave briefings and press releases. Opposition politicians, journalists and people suspected of plotting to create havoc were reported to have been imprisoned. At a cafe, I saw Aljazeera's news coverage on the incident. They concluded the report by reminding their viewers that the Oromo were the largest ethnic group deprived of political and economic rights in the country.
Thursday: (July 2)
Artiste Hachalu Hundesa's remains have been buried in the morning. I heard the program live from Ambo Stadium and the funeral site from the radio on my phone. My cute memories of a week I spent in the beautiful Ambo town started to recollect. I had no radio receiver or TV set in the week the riot took place to comfortably check from foreign media. I sat at Wabe Shebele Hotel in the afternoon when I learned with difficulty from the low sound of the TV an Aljazeera broadcast. They reported about the burial of the artiste. On this very day, local FM stations reported that certain political parties and their agents were held responsible by authorities for the incidents in the metropolis. The government gave briefings and releases through the Public Prosecutor, the PM, his deputy, the Mayor of Addis, and Oromia's President among others.
Many of my friends and relatives called to check my well-being and I also did the same to those living in Addis in return. People I met on this day asked me if the rioters came to our house at night and I told them that they didn't. Rain played key roles in preventing demonstrators from accessing the in and outs of the city. As far as I am concerned, nothing is heard in the compound I live in or nearby. The people who asked me, on the contrary, told me that there were such tough cases.
Friday (July 3):
As the Mayor of Addis Ababa Engineer Takele Uma had ordered the day before, normal business resumed. Those who lost their loved ones, who were enjured and those who lost their properties need a long time to recover. Internet connection is not yet back. The net surely helps businesses, but its negative sides of serving as a means of disseminating hateful messages to masses surely continues. It took me more than 15 days to air this observation due to the internet shutdown.
My take:
The assassination of celebrities is a major initial action that planners of attacks take. Even the First World War had the assassination of a member of a royal family as an immediate cause. Immediate causes could help ignite, however, in most cases bloodshed, civil wars, genocides or any other forms of public unrest happen as a result of carefully-planned plots. Strict proactive measures must be taken to prevent bloodshed and the massacre of innocent civilians of whatever background. The incidence of the assassination of Juvenile Habyarimana, the president who ruled Rwanda before the genocide, was planned to take place on March 23, 1994. Nonetheless, for their convenience the plotters of the genocide decided to execute it at midnight on the 6th of April 1994. Innocent Tutsis and moderate Hutus were wiped out afterwards. The then exiled Rwandan Patriotic Front, which had no means to fire rockets from near the airport in Kigali, was held responsible for the shooting down of the plane carrying Habyarimana and his Brundian counterpart. This fabricated pretext was used to resume the genocide the world watched indifferently.
I was in Addis Ababa last October when a more or less similar riot to the current one broke out. At that time, it happened mostly in the outskirts. More than eighty people were reportedly killed in Oromia. By sheer coincidence, I followed the inception and immediate cause of the October violence from social media at night. The current one also started at night. I really feel deeply worried when by coincidence I happen to learn about such protests that are waged at night because the starting of the Rwandan genocide by midnight reverberates in my mind. As the October incidence began, I disclosed on Facebook that I was leaving for a week-long wokshop in Ghana. A friend messaged, "Are you leaving us for death?" The current one has grown quite intense and threatened everyone. It reminds one of the fable about the frog that thought her hideout of a pond was safe when a wildfire set a nearby jungle ablaze. The scope and scale of this week's youthful outrage was larger as it battered even downtown Addis Ababa. On the other hand, in October, security was loose, yet this week authorities are seen making it tighter than before! Who can tell where our country is heading? Leave alone the defenseless mass like me, celebrities, rich people and Ethiopian holders of other passports cannnot escape such sudden situations. Travel restrictions the COVID 19 pandemic caused made every Ethiopian national staying currently in their home country more vulnerable. We are all locked in to seek together workable solutions to the most pressing of problems this country of 3000 (or as some politicians claim, 100) years is facing - ethnically-motivated plots, riots and attacks. Who knows how intense the next rage or riot may be?
I should take this opportunity to express my heartfelt grievances for all those Ethiopians of all backgrounds who lost their precious lives due to the well planned and ethnically motivated assaults. Not only this, I also really feel very sad for the plotters and their accomplices for going very cruel in as far as setting this trap for their country in an attempt to quench their lust for power and money!
Whether Ethiopians will open their hearts to the unifiers or cessationists in the upcoming elections remains the million dollar question!
P.S. The detailed reports that I heard on the days after the hateful and tragic occurrences from the informants of the Voice of America and Deutsche Welle from the butchering sites were really heartbreaking! People were singled out and attacked because of their ethnic and religious backgrounds. Lists of targets were made ready before the attacks. The attacks systematically orchestrated and made innocent civilians their victims! Meanwhile in Addis Ababa people organized themselves to defend their neighborhoods irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds.
